Collection of My Swan Photos

Elegant, graceful, serene  and pure, these are the adjectives come into my mind when I see swans. I enjoy taking photos of them.

I have taken 100s of photos of swans since 2008, at Yellowstone National Park, Denali National Park (US)), at Hyde park, London (UK),  in Australia, New Zealand and Singapore. To be exact, I took photos of 3 species of swans, mute swan, black swan and trumpeter swan, out of six living species of swans. The other 3 species are whooper swan, black necked swan and tundra swan. 

It is noted that when people talk about swan, they typically refer to mute swans - which have solid white plumage, orange beak, with a black knob atop the beak. It has dark grey legs. The reason that a swan was called mute swan, is that it is less vocal than other species of swans.

a lonely swan at Swan lake

There used to have a pair of swans at Swan Lake of Singapore Botanic Garden, which endeared them to me with their serene demeanor and graceful appearance since we started walking in the garden daily 3 years ago. Every week I would pass the swan lake at least once, rain or shine, and I would look for them. They were almost always being together, close or slightly apart. If one of them was out of sight, I would look for it until I spotted it. 

But I have not seen any cygnets - babe swans at Swan lake.

during the day

in the morning

in Sunshine

in rain

A months ago or so, the swans disappeared from the Swan lake for several weeks. Then only one sawn reappears, swims lonely in the lake now. For whatever reason, one swan was gone.

During our trip to mt Fuji, I saw a pair of swans at Kawaguchi lake near Mt Fuji. In fact there were several pairs of swans at Kawaguchi. 

a pair of swans at Lake Kawaguchi

The only time I  saw a swan family was at Hyde Park in London. The babe swan is indeed "ugly", they grow to adult size quickly but need time to change their plumage to solid white.

a swan family, two adults, and two cygnets 

a babe swan - "ugly duckling"

There are black swans at the echo lake in Singapore botanic garden. Unlike swan lake, the presence of the black swans here is quite random, sometimes there is only one black swan, some times there is a pair, and occasionally there is family of black swans, It seems that black swans are moved back and forth from a zoo. In fact there is a large cage on the east side of the lake, hidden in the dense plantations. There is extended period there is none, not even in the cage.

It is very similar to mute swan except that it has black plumage. The black swan has a red beak with a whitish tip, in contrast to mute swan's orang beak and back knob on it beak. Another feature is that it has white flight feather under its wings. 

a solo black swan

white flight feathers on a black swan

a pair of black swans

a family of black swans

caged black swan family

Black swans are native to Australia, black swans in other locations were introduced, such Europe, North America, and Southeast Asia.

We saw a black swan family in the wild at swan river of the City of Perth of West Australia. Just like mute swan (a.k.a. white swan), the cygnets, young black swans have grayish plumage, totally different from their parents

two adult black swans with three cygnets 

We saw a pair of  beautiful black swans in Avon river,  at Christchurch, South Island, New Zealand, during our south island adventure  in December 2923.

Trumpeter swans have white plumage, but black beak. We saw trumpeter swans in  Denali National Park in Alaska, and Yellowstone national park. In fact serendipity was our side during our Yellowstone stone trip, we saw both a brown bear and trumpeter swan in a relative short time span. We only saw a solo swan both times.

Mute swans,  black swans and trumpeter swans are monogamous breeders, they mate for life. A pair of swans symbolize love, loyalty and fidelity.

Identification of Flowers at Botanic Gardens

There are so many beautiful plants and flowers at Singapore. Unfortunately I can not identify almost all of them. This severely limits my writing about flora at very elementary level, e.g. I could only describe flowers only by their colors.

 I use image search tool, Google Lens, to help me. Google Lens is a image search tool, "it compares objects in a picture to other images, and ranks those images based on their similarity and relevance to the objects in the original picture". 

For flora with distinctive features, Lens' top ranked image can match the object in my photo, e.g. a banana flower, or a white flower with 5 petals, one yellow pistil, white stamen (flower anatomy), which is Wrightia antidysenterica, or in common name snowflakes. To be sure I always do a cross validation by Google search using identified name.

Banana Flower

Wrightia Antidysenterica (common name Snowflakes)

There are times, when top 3 or 5 matches are very similar, especially when the sources for  the matched images do not provide specific information. For example, for the following photo of plant with slender pepper, Google Lens' top match was Iboga, a cross check showed a plant with pepper shaped fruit which is very different from what is in the photo. Several lower ranked ranked images seems to match the photo better, but in non English languages or in photo storage site such as Flickr.

Orange Milkwood

In this case, I do secondary or tertiary search based on information from Google Lens search. The best alternate is to use database specific to the location the flower is (Singapore for this case). Singapore national parks maintains a flora & fauna web - the database for plants and animals found in Singapore online.  Using Google Lens information and the local database, I identified the plant as orange milkwood (Tabernaemontana aurantiaca Gaudich).

Here a few other flora photos I took on Saturday with official names identified.

Common Sendudok 野牡丹

Toad tree fruit

Golden Trumpet Vine, 软枝黄蝉

Thalia geniculata (Alligator flag)

Cuphea?

Ixora

Crepe Ginger

An Ashtailor at Keppel Wetland

I was on the boardwalk at Keppel Wetland in the early evening on Tuesday. It was pretty quiet, no chirps from birds, no other people. When I got to the section where I had an interesting encounter with a crimson sunbird,  I slowed down, and looked around slowly hoping to see something interesting - I saw nothing. A little bit disappointed, I moved on. 

Just then, I paused and walked back a few steps, there, a tiny ashtailor bird was perching on a branch quietly in the trees by the pond, not doing anything particular. 

As I started taking pictures, it must have heard the shutter of my camera, it looked around and turned to my direction, looking inquisitively. Seeing nothing, it looked away. But the continuing shutter sound made it looking into my direction again. A few seconds later, it flew away, and returned shortly, but now perching on a different branch, a bit further away from where I stood. I did not take any more pictures, it must be the bird's roosting time, I left it alone.

I walked away pleased.

where is the noise coming from?

what's that?

Notes

1. I watched ashtailors many times before - mostly attracted by its bright chirps

Ashtailor at Sungei Buloh1

Two ashtailors chasing each other at Subgei Buloh

at Botanic Garden

2. This encounter made me more curious about the bird.  here is some detailed information about the tailor birds building their nests 

Lodging on TMB

To have a great experience on the trail of Tour Du Mont Blanc (TMB), lodging and meals are important. Fortunately for us, with the guided hiking, the agency arranged everything - quality/reputable lodges with fair price and at good locations. All of the lodges we stayed are close to the TMB trail, i.e. within ~ 2km hiking distance, one -  Refuge des Mottets - is actually right by the trail.

All lodges provide meal service and the meals (dinner and breakfast) were included in the fees we paid.

Day 1 - we stayed at Chalet Alpin du Tour in France, which is facing the mouth of a glacier at Grande Fourche, which forms the border between France and Switzerland. It has dormitory rooms with 2 bunker beds, one twin size bed per room, i.e.  5 person/room. It serves typical very basic 3 course Swiss food,  soup or salad, entree, and desert. Proteins were cheese and sausage.

One typical requirement in all lodges is that boots and hiking poles have to be left at the foyer at the entrance to keep the lodge clean

The glacier is right in front of the lodge - I had to walk away to take a full picture of it

donkeys are actually for carrying luggage for some groups

Day 2  - We stayed in a regular hotel La Grande Ourse, in a small town/village Trient of Switzerland. This is a typical beautiful village we see on a postcard  of Switzerland. Two unique features - a pink chapel, and the glacier of  Aiguille du Chardonnet. It has all the amenities of a hotel - a bar, a restaurant, except that toilets and bathrooms are shared

Day 3  - We stayed at a refuge -  Relais d'Arpette, in Switzerland. It is a rustics wooden structured hotel, with shared toilets and bathrooms. We were lucky - we had a room facing cusp of a valley, with its own toilet and bathroom. We saw the mountain peaks turn golden during sunrise from our bed!

The food here is served buffet like. 

Golden hue of sunrise

Day 4 - we stayed at Maya-Joie L'auberge  in Switzerland...the hotel has two buildings, we stayed in the second floor of the smaller building. It has nice views of  mountain peaks and glaciers around Mt Dolent, and a glacier river running in front of it. We had freezing therapy on our feet and knees. 

We were served Swiss historical food - Raclette for dinner and had a buffet style breakfast facing another golden hued glaciated mountains.

Unfortunately there were bed bugs in our hotel beds. 

soaking my leg into the freezing glacier river

Tomme cheese for dinner

Day 5 -  We entered Italy, and stayed at Hotel Restaurant Lavachey. It is a few steps away from a glacier river,  and surrounded by mountain peaks. We had the best dinner on the trail here!! Soup, Chicken breasts, and Black berry pies. The added bonus next morning was the sight of  Mont Blanc, which is ~ 14 km west to the lodge,  under the setting Moon

Mont Blanc under setting Moon

Day 6. - we were still in Italy, and stayed at Rufiogio Monte Bianco. Here Mont Blanc is called Monte Bianco. The lodge is right beneath Mt Blanc! 

Day 7 - We were back to France, stayed at Refuge des Mottets. It stands alone by Torrents des Galciers in a valley. It served most rudimentary food. But we got culture treats after dinner... French folk songs from an ancient device, many guests sung along.

Day 8 - last night on TMB. We stayed at Hotel La Gelinotte,  a beautiful garden hotel, nice view of the glaciated mountain peak - which I mistaken as Mont Blanc -  it is Aiguille de Bionnassay, which blocks the view of Mont Blanc from the valley

We had a formal nice 3 course dinner - with wine from our French teammates - it was our last super together for the whole TMB hiking team. I made a formal toast to everyone for their comradeship and to our tour guide Chole. 

Day 9 - We returned to Chamonix and stayed at Croix Blanche...the same hotel we stayed the day before our TMB. We stored our large luggage here. These hotel stays were not a part of the guided tour. 

Chamonix was cloudy the day before our TMB

Chamonix was sunny the day we left for home